RoguePundit

Hope the authorities have the right folks in custody...you really have to wonder what's wrong with people who do something like this. Harley D. Hopkins, 22, and Jacob A. Goodboe, 16, are being held in the Josephine County Jail, charged with four counts of felony animal abuse, one count of first-degree theft, one-count of criminal mischief and one count of second-degree burglary. Between 5 p.m....

All of Oregon's tribes have a casino. For the Klamath Tribes (the Klamath, Modoc, and Yahooskin Band of the Snake Paiute), it's the Kla-Mo-Ya Casino, which is 22 miles north of Klamath Falls. It's not a big-money casino because it's not near a large number of potential customers. A couple of years ago, I blogged about the Klamath Tribes doing some reservation shopping just south of...

There are always winners and losers when people change their purchasing habits. For many, joining the locavore movement involves the blithe assumption that they're taking business away from factory farms that are hurting the environment. Even Wikipedia points out that notion. Local food is, by definition, food locally grown. Many local food proponents tend to equate it with food produced by...

Jail Fever: Not that long ago, typhus--which is unrelated to typhoid--was one of the world's most feared diseases. There are multiple varieties of typhus, not counting Rocky Mountain spotted fever (occasionally called tick typhus), which is caused by a bacterium in the same genus. Epidemic typhus is the one that can kill lots of people quickly. This disease, caused by Rickettsia prowazekii,...

Mexico is yet another nation that has more stringent safety standards when it comes to beef importation and mad cow disease than we do. Earlier this week, Mexico further tightened its regulations on the importation of Canadian cattle. Mexico will ban cattle from Alberta from crossing its border until officials find out more about what Canada is doing to prevent mad cow disease, a Canadian...

This following research was a rather incomplete effort. Researchers from the University of Florida noted that chronic, repeated ear infections can damage a nerve in the middle ear that controls taste sensations. Damage to the chorda tympani nerve appears to intensify the desire for fatty or high-energy foods, which could result in obesity, they say. The study suggests that prompt diagnosis and...

Last month, I blogged about a bacterium--Helicobacter pylori--which can cause a range of stomach problems, but whose eradication in the industrialized world may be contributing to increased asthma rates. Its loss may also be linked to an increase in some other problems, such as acid-reflux disease. Dr Blaser has discovered, for example, that H. pylori helps to regulate stomach-acid levels in a...